


Forged by Fire

by apeirophobia



Series: Prince of Edirne [2]
Category: Dracula & Related Fandoms, Dracula Untold (2014)
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Estrangement, Gen, Internal Conflict, M/M, Political Hostages, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-02-26 17:30:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2660441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apeirophobia/pseuds/apeirophobia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 1440 Vlad's father gives him up to the Ottoman Empire without a fight. In 1460 Vlad dies in a cave in Wallachia. A few things happen in between.</p><p>(In which Radu slowly becomes Mehmed the Conqueror, Vlad not-so-slowly becomes Vlad the Impaler, and Turks and non-Turks alike burn on the coals of their childhood.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forged by Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SweetNightingale09](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetNightingale09/gifts), [licet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/licet/gifts).



> Part two of my Mehmet-is-really-Radu series. This one is from Vlad's POV and focuses on the ten years he spent in Turkey with his brother.

Vlad doesn't always make the best decisions. He knows this, knows this as his fist collides with his instructor's face and blood gushes from the older man's nose. Knows this as a boot catches him in the ribs and he falls to his knees, wheezing, with tears in his eyes. He looks up to see the instructor, General Oz, holding Radu's jaw firmly and talking lowly to him. Sees Radu nod, serious, and then turn his attention to Vlad, his big brown eyes wide with concern. Radu is a bright child but he doesn't understand exactly what is going on, just understands _compliance leads to less pain_ and _being strong makes Vlad proud_. Vlad is ten and has already decided that stubborn rebellion is the best way to stay alive, both in body and in spirit. Radu is six and still trying to please everyone. Radu breaks Vlad's gaze, draws out his sword, and steps into the fighting ring.

 

(This is how they try to break them. But this is not how they succeed.)

 

Their mother writes to them sometimes, letters that say  _be good_ and  _miss you_ and  _look out for your brother_. Vlad reads them, commits them to memory, even though they feel hollow. He reads them to Radu before bed sometimes when the barracks are quiet and they aren't so worn out that they drop off to sleep immediately. Radu can speak Romanian but he can't read or write it, was just beginning to learn when they left home, and Vlad translates the words he doesn't know. Vlad knows that their mother, Vasilissa, is more of a concept to Radu than an actuality, his recollection of her growing hazier each day. To Radu she's a ghost, a whisper of a kiss and a distant memory of a warm embrace. Vlad can still feel her tears on his skin. _  
_

 

Radu burrows down in Vlad's covers and when he asks, "Does she love us?" he sounds more curious than wistful.

 

"Of course," Vlad says, remembering her muffled sobs behind the closed nursery door. Remembers her tracing her fingertips over Radu's face after he fell asleep, as if trying to preserve the image of her soon-to-be-gone baby in her mind. He remembers how their father had made them say their good-byes at the castle, how he had been deaf to their mother's suffering when he ushered Vlad and his brother into the carriage. Vlad aches for the memory of his mother's last kiss, aches for his father's cold heart and his mother's empty arms. Aches for the woman Radu will never know.

 

"I think I loved her," Radu says, in perfect Turkish, and Vlad aches even more.

 

(And the cracks started forming in the levees before Vlad even knew there was a flood.)

  

Vlad has an extra hour of practice, Vlad always has an extra hour of practice, an extra lap to run, ten lashes for being late, and it's getting dark out.

 

"You should go inside, Rad," he says to his brother. His small, stubborn, brother who's currently sitting wrapped in a pile of cloak, half-asleep.

 

"I don't want to leave you," Radu says, and it's half allegiance to Vlad, half eight-year-old obstinance, that keeps him rooted to the spot.

 

"You'll catch a chill if you fall asleep out here," Vlad says, concern slipping into his voice. He's always torn between fussing over Radu's well-being (he's the only family Vlad has in this place) and trying to keep his distance, so as to not attract extra trouble to his little brother. Vlad knows he stands out, not always--as in never--in a good way, and he doesn't want to give their captors any reason to hurt Radu for Vlad's transgressions. And Radu, being Vlad's brother, gives them reason enough on his own. Radu excels at their scholarly lessons, but far from having his brother's physical talents (Vlad can pass any test, beat any opponent on his first try), it sometimes takes Radu a couple of attempts to master a weapon, or a particular fighting move, and the Turks are not into giving second chances (Vlad's greatest weakness is his unyielding, Wallachian attitude; Radu's greatness weakness is his utterly exploitable complaisance).

 

Vlad notices things, things that he thinks he's not supposed to (things that he wishes he didn't) the longer he is in Edirne. Things like the way Pasha Savaş watches his brother, the way his stare lingers just a little too long. Vlad is thirteen and spends most of his time knee deep in blood and ash, training with the janissaries until he's too exhausted to think, ignoring the reality of his situation as best he can. Each time he returns to the fortress Radu looks a little taller, seems a little thinner, less and less the cheerful toddler he was in Wallachia. But Radu still runs to greet him with a grin when he returns from overnight assignments, arms wrapped around Vlad's waist and face pressed into his breast-plate. He comes up to Vlad's shoulder now, and Vlad presses his lips to the top of Radu's head, hoping nobody catches his humanity in action. He notices the Pasha from across the Great Hall, eyeing the brother's exchange, and pauses, recalling the older man being at the periphery of previous social situations too often for his liking.

 

"What did he want with you?" Vlad asks, beginning to mess with his brother's gravity-defying hair before stopping himself. He consciously tries to keep his mothering of Radu to a minimum whilst in public. Tries to keep his reputation, as an up-and-coming heartless and bloodthirsty monster, pristine. Puts his hands on his brother's shoulders instead and says, "I saw Savaş talking to you when I came in."

 

"He was asking if I needed any assistance with my swordsmanship; I told him no," Radu says, "And then he told me I'd better pass this week's assessment, otherwise he would have caught me in a lie."

 

Radu shrugs, like the conversation didn't rattle him. Radu is nine and too smart for his age, but he's still trusting of authority in a way that Vlad's never been.

 

"Don't be alone with him," he tells Radu, "if you can avoid it. Clever your way out if you have to," and Radu nods seriously. Vlad only gives him direct orders when he means it. 

 

Radu passes his next exam with high marks and Vlad breathes a sigh of relief. But relief is such a short-lived thing when one lives in a world of enemies, and Vlad is sent off on his first week-long assignment not long after.

 

"Be good," Vlad tells Radu, an echo of his mother's words in letters that no longer come, and Radu says, "Am I ever anything less?" with a cheeky grin.

 

(Vlad is like a handprint he can't wipe off, it marks Radu wherever he goes, and Vlad worries that his brother has inherited his propensity for trouble as well.)

 

"What are you doing here?" Vlad asks, pulling back the blankets and climbing into bed. Radu is ten and he fourteen and they're far too old to be doing this.  _My bed is cold, I don't like sleeping alone,_  all the usual excuses Radu uses to get Vlad to let him stay,but what he says is, "My cot is too close to Pasha Savaş' tent," and when he buries his face in Vlad's shoulder Vlad tells himself he doesn't know what Radu is complaining about, but his blood still runs cold. Not for the first time, not for the millionth, he wants to go home. How can Radu find any comfort in crawling into Vlad's bed when Vlad wants to crawl into his mother's? He feels woefully inadequate.

 

"Please don't make me sleep alone," Radu pleads, and Vlad realizes how very little he asks for. It's always Vlad asking, Vlad telling, and Radu doing his best to keep up, to make his brother proud. And all he asks for in return is a semblance of comfort, of protection, to which Vlad can only offer him a shallow facade.

 

Vlad acquiesces and Radu curls up to him with a sigh, a pointed chin catching Vlad in the ribs and cold feet shocking the back of his calves as Radu settles down. He smells of incense, and Vlad knows he must have been reading in one of the prayer rooms. If only their father could see them now; Radu, the boy who probably reads the Quran more often than the Sultan, and Vlad, the Ottoman Empire's star janissary. He should be so proud.

 

It is still dark, hours later, when Vlad wakes to footsteps in the corridor outside. He pulls the blankets over Radu's head, hiding him from view, and pretends to be asleep when the guards walk past.

 

Vlad slaughters an entire village when he's fifteen. Three hundred souls, some more innocent than others, but all of them lose their lives to his sword. When he's upturned the entire settlement, (and it really  _was_ a solo effort, most of the men just stand back and watch him fight) he grabs a broken fence post and uses it to transpierce the nearest corpse. No one stops him, not even as he fixes the stake in the ground, hoisting the body into everyone's eye-line. No one speaks against him, no one _dares_ , not even his commander, General Oz, who looks taken aback by Vlad's macabre display. Vlad thinks,  _you threw me into the ring, you were there for my first kill_ , and feels a great sense of satisfaction at the ill look on Oz's face. He thinks,  _revel in the truth of what you are_ , and tries to not reflect too deeply on  _what_ that makes  _him_.

 

He and Radu see less of each other now; Vlad is constantly away with the army and Radu is busy with his training and his studies, and Vlad thinks it's for the better. Vlad hates leaving but he secretly enjoys the simplicity of war. There are no politics on the battlefield; only dexterity, intimidation, and violence (only things he can't fail at).

 

Radu is eleven and sometimes Vlad feels like he's becoming a stranger. He's quicker to smile than Vlad and quicker to speak Turkish (Vlad stumbling over the words like poison in his mouth), even when they are alone. Vlad is nearly sixteen and can pass himself off as a man, leaving Radu behind in height and civility. His fellow soldiers defer to him seamlessly as he rises through the ranks and Radu, while known to be the best swordsman at court, and excelling in his studies, is very obviously a boy, a janissary-in-training, with his rounder face and his bright eyes. Vlad has respect and appreciation but Radu has innocence and hope, and Vlad covets it more than he should. Laments it, really, because Radu's well-being is still his responsibility, even if he's gotten better at taking lives than saving them.

 

One day Vlad returns from a long-term mission (discouraging a minor coup in the Eastern province) and Radu doesn't run to greet him. He brushes it off at first; what's one lapse in over a decade of brotherly devotion? But when he's washed off the grime of the road and stabled his horse, and Radu still has not shown himself, Vlad decides to go look for him. He figures he'll find him hiding in one of the corners of the castle, curled up with a book undoubtedly, or possibly out in the training fields, practicing his fighting.

 

Instead he finds Radu in his room (and Vlad didn't have a room of his own when  _he_ was twelve, but that's a jealous thought for another time) kneeling on his bed, hands braced on the windowsill, staring into the courtyard below. A silver-edged sword, not the one Radu regularly uses, with a golden hilt lays on the bed at Radu's feet. Vlad was prepared to find Radu in a bit of a huff (Vlad did miss his latest birthday during the trip, after-all), but he didn't expect...this. Radu's stillness and his lack of notice of Vlad's presence is off-putting.

 

"Where did you get a sword like that?" Vlad asks the first question that comes to mind, though he has many, and Radu startles. Vlad has the sudden unbidden thought that Radu wasn't so much looking out the window, as if in anticipation of his brother's return, as he was thinking about jumping. His brother turns to look at him, one hand still on the windowsill, fingers tightening in promise.

 

Radu is quicker in wit, but Vlad is faster in speed, and he catches Radu's wrist before he can jerk it away. Radu winces and Vlad doesn't have to ask twice.

 

"Pasha Savaş gave it to me," he says, and Vlad wonders when Radu became so sad for twelve years old. Radu looks, more or less, like he did the last time Vlad saw him, a month before, but now there are dark circles under his usually bright eyes and a look of haunted shame on his face. A look that has no place being on his little brother's face.

 

"It's beautiful," Vlad says cautiously, and he knows there is a plethora that Radu isn't saying. Knows, without knowing, that there is a lot he doesn't want to hear.

 

"The most luxurious sword in the kingdom, save for the Sultan's," Radu states, and there is no hint of joy in his words.

 

Vlad pushes Radu's slightly-too-long sleeves up his arms, exposing the edges of bandages, bruises showing on the flesh that his laced armguards fail to cover, "Did he give you these as well?"

 

Radu doesn't look him in the eyes, just stares at the floor and nods. Vlad clenches his teeth and turns away with a sigh when he really wants to kill something instead.

 

"I'm sorry," Radu says, and Vlad doesn't turn around.

 

 _ImsorryImsorry_ Radu whispers into his hands, over and over again, and Vlad knows that he is a failure. 

 

He never asks Radu what happened, and looks away when Radu cries, but he bars the window in Radu's room before he leaves for the next campaign.

  

(Radu is twelve and beautiful and Vlad is sixteen and always away and he doesn't know how to not worry. He doesn't know how to protect his brother, either.)

 

There's a village, and then another, always more that take a stand, that try to fight back, and Vlad chuckles ruefully because it's just so easy. Don't they know who he _is_? Don't they know how this is going to _end_? He says he wants to make his father proud, says he wants to prove that his father made the right decision, wants to validate his own existence, but when it comes to parries and blows it's more about surviving, about _thriving_ , than semantics and pretty reasons. He is _good_ at this, and deep down he doesn't need excuses. When bright red blood, warm in the early morning cool, sprays across his face from a peasant's torn neck he grins and tastes iron. It's an act, the vicious Wallachian ward with a bloodthirsty vendetta. It's an act but it's not. He knows how to do this, this makes sense. For every time he feels like he's failing Radu, or failing to uphold his father's will, he can step on the battlefield and regain control. Vlad steps on the near-dead peasant's shoulder, crunches cartilage beneath his heel, and nods at one of the men under his command, "Gather the pikes," he says. This is one of an unlucky lot, every soul in the valley is going up in display.

 

Vlad circles back behind the church, mission after mission having taught him that cowering villagers like to hide there in sanctuary. He finds Savaş instead.

 

"All clear," the older man says with a nod of his head, and all Vlad can hear is the  _whoosh whoosh whoosh_ of his pulse racing, blood thudding in his ears. He knows he must look a man possessed, with his hair free and blood still running down his face, but it's the look in his eyes that lets the Pasha know he is in danger.

 

Vlad can hear screams, the sound of his men dragging children out of their sanctuary, and he uses the mayhem as cover. Vlad throws his sword and between a breath and a thought Savaş' spinal cord is severed. He falls to the ground, dead, and Vlad exhales. He pulls his sword free of the general's body and marvels at the blood on his sword. Before today his sword was a virgin to Turkish blood. Instead of wiping his sword on the grass, like someone trying to conceal a crime might, like someone who was frightened might, he gathers the blood with his fingers and wipes it on his face, proud, like war paint. He rubs it across his lips, tastes iron and thinks,  _Turks taste just the same_. Then he drags the general's body inside and burns the church.

 

That night Vlad scrubs off a layer of skin in his bid to be rid of the residue of ~~blood and grime and~~  memory. Hot water and sand can wash away the evidence but it can't undo the act. He lost control. He killed a superior from his own army. He does not regret it. The bed dips and for a minute Vlad panics, thinking the ghosts of his past deeds have gained corporality and come for revenge, before realizing it is only Radu and relaxing.

 

He doesn't say, _So I heard General Savaş is dead_ , doesn't say, _Y_ _ou killed the_ _Pasha_  (he's far too clever to say something so incriminating, even in the faux privacy of Vlad's quiet room), he says "Thank you," and Vlad doesn't want to hear it. Can't take gratitude from his brother for something he should have done years ago. Can't take the responsibility and the guilt.

 

"Go, go take a bath. You reek like the Ottoman empire," he says, and Radu's probably only been hanging out in one of the castle's prayer rooms, but he smells too much like a Turk for Vlad's peace of mind.

 

"Oh Vlad, I'm sleeeeepy," Radu says pitifully, but Vlad refuses to be swayed, pulling back the covers and pointing towards the door.

 

Radu grumbles half-heartedly after that, but he complies. He always complies with Vlad's wishes.

 

(Radu leaves but he doesn't come back.)

 

"I worry for you," Vlad says and Radu knows he's not talking about the bandages wrapped around his bruised ribs. Knows he's talking about bigger things than Radu's place in the janissaries. Radu doesn't say  _you shouldn't_ doesn't say  _I'll be fine_ , he says, "I can handle it."

 

"Oh, like you handled Savaş?" Vlad says and Radu looks away, "You're not always here," Radu says and it means  _that wasn't my fault_ it means...

 

"If it happens again, if a superior gets too close, you know what to do," he says and hands Radu a gilded brass knife to keep on his person.

 

Radu takes the knife, looks to his brother in disbelief at what he's suggesting, and says, "They'll do away with me." He's taken lives, on the battlefield of course, but having to kill someone, even someone awful, in a domestic situation seems unimaginably daunting. Two years ago, with Savaş, fighting back wasn't an option. Two years may have improved his physical abilities, but he is still bridled by the psychological limitations of conscious.

 

"What would you rather be, dead or dishonored?" Vlad questions harshly, and Radu's eyes widen in comprehension. The look on his face is so crestfallen that Vlad almost takes pity on him, but he can not afford to be soft, not on this, not on anything anymore.

 

"How much is my life worth if that's all my existence amounts to? A wrong time and place?" Radu says, and he turns the knife against his skin, "If so then what is keeping me from admitting a foregone conclusion?"

 

"You're too smart to kill yourself," Vlad says, and he only just hides the worry in his voice.

 

"Regrettably so," Radu says, and drops the knife.

 

(Radu is fourteen when he kills a Turk in self-defense for the first time. He doesn't climb into his brother's bed afterward.)

 

Radu hasn't taken a quarter of the lives that Vlad has, but he has killed. He's killed on command, and he's killed to stay alive. It seems to mean nothing to his brother compared to the fact that Radu wears eyeliner and prays in Turkish. Radu can't remember his mother's face and he doesn't know how to make his brother happy. He can't remember his mother's face, and he can't read Romanian, but that doesn't mean he doesn't remember what _home_ means. Their father is dead and Vlad seems to think he has a monopoly on sentimentality.

 

"Do you think I don't miss home too?" Radu asks incredulously, and it seems so treasonous, coming from a little Prince who looks every part the Turk, "You can tar and cure wood, but you can't make it stone," he says, and he looks betrayed.

 

"You do a very good impression of stone," Vlad says coldly, and Radu turns away. It was a low blow, he knows this. He also knows that Radu hasn't cried in his presence since he was five years old but, from the way his brother's shoulders tighten and his mouth shakes, Radu is coming very close to breaking his ten year record.

 

"You're one to talk, Impaler," Radu says, and he spits Vlad's epithet like a curse.

 

 _Everything I did, I did to protect you_ , Vlad thinks, and he knows it wasn't enough.

 

(The Sultan says, "Any girl who has permission to marry a janissary would have you," and that's not what Vlad wants to hear. The Sultan says "Wallachia is in need of a ruler," and Vlad hears _you can go home_.)

 

He thinks of how he still misses how Wallachia smells, thinks of how much better Radu has adjusted to the language and the politics here, as if it's an excuse. It's not, really, there are no excuses for what he's about to do. Radu looks up to Vlad, he _trusts_ him, which makes Vlad another person, in a long line of people, who've betrayed that trust. Radu always listens to Vlad, because Vlad is his big brother, and that's a problem, because Vlad doesn't always make the best decisions.

 

"When can I come home?" Radu asks, and Vlad doesn't say  _You already are._

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed part 2! Comments and kudos are love <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Know the waters sweet but blood is thicker (and that much harder to erase)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2969366) by [SweetNightingale09](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetNightingale09/pseuds/SweetNightingale09)




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